pelteret -- slaves and slave trading ang saxon england.pdf

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Slave raiding and slave trading in early EnglandD A V I D P E L T E R E T

Slaves were an integral and numerically important part of English societyin the Anglo-Saxon period.1 They appear in the earliest English law codepromulgated between 597 and 616 by iEthelberht of Kent;2 nearly half amillennium later at the beginning of the Norman age their continuedwidespread presence in English society is attested by Domesday Book.3 Yetthey do not seem to have excited much attention from scholars. The longesttreatment in print remains that by Kemble, which was written over a centuryago.4 Stenton in his magisterial survey of Anglo-Saxon England made onlyfour references to them.5 Some other recent histories, however, havediscussed slavery in more detail. Professor Whitelock rightly included slavesin her analysis of the social classes of England up to the time of the NormanConquest.6 H. P. R. Finberg took this further in his agrarian history ofAnglo-Saxon England by dividing the society into three chronologicalperiods and examining the regional variations within England during thoseperiods.7 Both works m ention the slave trade.8 This receives a more detaileddiscussion in H. R. Loyn's economic and social history.9 But the evidenceon slavery in England is mostly fragmentary and in widely scattered sources.Inevitably general histories of the period but skim the surface. Only bypatiently assembling all the evidence, as Professor V erlinden has been doing

' The following abbreviations are used in this paper: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock = Th eAnglo-Saxon Chronicle: a Revised Translation, ed. D. Whitelock et al. (Lon don, 1961; rev. 1965);ASC = Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; EHD = English Historical Documents c. joo-1042, ed. D. Whitelock(London, 19 s 5; 2nd ed. 1979); Liebermann, Gesetê ~ Die Gesetê der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann,3 vols. (Halle, 1903-16); M GH = Monumenta Germaniae Historica; RS = Rolls Series; Tw oChronicles = Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. C. Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1892-9).2 Liebermann, Gesetê 1, 3, 4 and 8, chs. 10, 11, 16, 89 and 90 (text); EHD no. 29.3 Domesday Book, ed. A. Farley, Record Commission, 2 vols. (London, 1783); for maps showing thedistribution of slaves in England according to Domesday Book, see the series The DomesdayGeography of England, ed. H. C. Darby et al., 7 vols. (Cambridge, 1952-77).4 J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in England 1 (London, 1849; n e w * rev. W. de G. Birch, 1876), 185-227.5 F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxfo rd, 1971), pp. 314, 47 6-7 , 479 and 5M-6 D. Whitelock, Th e Beginnings of English Society (Harmondsworth, 1952), esp. pp. 108-14.7 'Anglo-Saxon England to 1042', The Agrarian History of England and Wales 1.2: AD 4)1042(Cambridge, 1972), esp. chs. 3, 4 and 7.8 Whitelock, Beginnings, pp. 111-12, 119-20 and 122; Finberg, Agrarian History, pp. 437, 442 andS7-' H. R. Loyn, Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (London, 1962), pp. 86-9 and 96.

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David Pelteretfor many years in his studies on slavery in continental Europe,10 canknowledge about this significant element in English society be advanced.11The institu tion of slavery, which was such a distinctive feature of the socialand economic life of the ancient world,12 remained one of the more durablelegacies bestowed by Rome on the Middle Ages.13 There had been slaves inall parts of the Roman imperium, including B ritain.14 But, since the Romansmanumitted many of their slaves, numbers needed constantly to be replen-ished, a demand that was met not just by the conquest of foreign peoplesbut also through trade with areas well beyond the Roman frontiers. Incontrast to the Roman world, slavery seems not to have been an integralelement in the social structure of the Germanic peoples living outside theEm pire at the time w hen Tacitus was writing abou t them. But, whereas someof these peoples simply slaughtered those conquered in war, othe rs seem earlyto have taken to enslaving captives, presumably because of the demandgenerated from within the Empire.15 In the continental homelands of theAnglo-Saxons - the Danish peninsula and the coastlands of northern Ger-many and Holland16 - slaves were probably an im portant item in trade withthe Romans by the first two centuries AD.17

Thus by the time the Romans relinquished effective control over Britainby withdrawing their legions in 407, l8 the enslavement of captives may bepresumed to have been commonly practised by those Germanic peoples thathave come to be know n as Anglo-Saxons. The Roman w ithdrawal gave themfree rein to pillage and invade Britain just as they had done with such10 C . V er l i n d en , UEsclavage dans f Europe midiivalt I: Peninsule lbe'rique-Franee; n : Ita/ie, Colonies italiennesdu Levant, Levant latin, Empire by^antin, Univcrsiteit tc Gent, Wcrken uitgegeven door de Faculteitvan de Letteren en Wijsbegeerte 1192nd 162 (Bruges, 1955; Ghent, 1977), as well as nume rous articles." On slavery in Englan d from the time of King Alfred on ward s, see my 'Late A nglo-Saxon Slavery:an Interdisciplinary Approach to the Various Forms of Evidence' (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ.

of Toronto, 1976).12 The bibliography on this subject is now voluminous. Two general surveys are R. H. Barrow's Slaveryin the Roman Empire (London, 1928) and W. L. Westermann's, Th e Slave Systems of Greek an d RomanAntiquity, Memoirs of the Amer. Philosophical Soc. 40 (Phalidelphia, 1955).13 Indeed it survived throughout the Middle Ages in the Iberian peninsula and from there wasintroduced into the New World. See Verlinden, L'Esclavage 1 and D . B. Davis, The Problem of Slaveryin Western Culture (New York, 1966), pp. 41-6.14 For references to slaves in Britain, see R. G. Collingwood and R. P. Wright, Th e Roman Inscriptionsof Britain 1 (Oxford, 1965), nos. 21,44s, 7I2> 7(')> 9 * and 1456. The re a re also nu merous referencesin the same volume to freedmen, e.g. nos. 15, 74, 143 and 144.15 E. A. Thompson,' Slavery in Early Germany', Hermatbena 89 (1957X >7~29> e s P - 1719; repr. Slaveryin Classical Antiquity, ed. M. I. Finley (Cambridge, i960; repr. 1968), pp. 191-203.16 On the con tinental hom elands of the Germ anic invaders of England, see J. N. L. M yre s,' The Angles,the Saxons and the Jutes', PB A 56 (1970), 145-74." M. Todd , The Northern Barbarians 100 B.C.-A.D. joo (London, 1975), pp. 37 and 41.18 The chro nolog y of events in Britain during this period is discussed by E . A. Thom pson ('Britain,A.D. 406-410' , Britannia 8 (1977), 303-18).

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Slave raiding and slave trading in early "Englanddevastating effect some forty years earlier.19 One can draw only the sketchiestoutline of the events that took place there over the next two centuries. 20 Thecomplete disappearance of Celtic culture from the east and south-east ofBritain undoubtedly points to the assimilation or extermination of the Celtsin these areas by the invading Germanic settlers, although some probablyretreated to the north and west of the country.21 Many Celts in the sou th-westseem to have migrated to Brittany and even Spain, probably to evade theonslaughts of the Irish.22 But there are traces of the survival of Romanculture23 and both archaeological and literary evidence suggest that Celt andSaxon coexisted in some areas.24 One cannot, therefore, accept withoutreservation Gildas's description of what happened to the indigenous popu-lation in the years preceding 500: 'nonnulli miserarum reliquiarum inmontibus deprehensi acervatim iugulabantur: alii fame confecti accedentesmanus hostibus dabant in aevum servituri'.25Nevertheless Gildas was probably not exaggerating when he asserted that

" O n t he a t t a c k s of 5 6 5 - 7 a n d t h e i r c o n s e q u e n c e s , see R. G. C o l l i n g w o o d a n d J. N . L. M y r e s , RomanBritain and the English Settlements, 2 n d ed . ( O x f o r d , 1 9 3 7 ) , p p . 2 8 4 - 6 , a n d S. F r e r e , Britannia ( L o n d o n ,1967) , p p . 3 5 0 - 9 .

2 0 The question of the degree of continuity between the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods remains anopen one. Archaeology is providing information that shows that the picture is more complex thanhas hitherto been believed. It is also now realized that the term 'continuity' must be more closelydefined, as is stressed by W. Janssen, 'Some Major Aspects of Frankish and Medieval Settlement inthe Rhineland', Medieval Settlement: Continuity and Change, ed. P. H. Sawyer (London , 1976), p. 41.For some of the recent findings, see Medieval Settlement and Anglo-Saxon Settlement an d Landscape, ed.T. Rowley, BAR 6 (Oxford, 1974). L. Alcockin Arthur''sBritain: History and Archaeology, AD )6j-6)4(London, 1971) presents a thorough conspectus with an emphasis on archaeological material. Butsee also D. N. Dumville, 'Sub-Roman Britain: History and Legend', History 62 (1977), 173-92.

21 For the survival of Celts in England, see N. K. Chadwick,' The British or Celtic Part in the Populationof England', Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures (Cardiff, 1963), pp. 111-47, a n d 'The CelticBackground of Early Anglo-Saxon England', Celt and Saxon: Studies in the Early British Border, ed.N. K. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1963), pp . 323-52. For the rest of Britain, see M. Faull ,' British Survivalin Anglo-Saxon North umbria' and L. La ing,' Segontium and the Post-Roman Occupation of Wales',Studies in Celtic Survival, BAR 37 (Oxford , 1977), 1-55 and 57-60.22 O n t he i m m i g r a t i o n of C e l t s i n t o B r i t t a n y , see N . K. C h a d w i c k , Early Brittany (Cardiff, 1969), p p .1 6 2 - 2 3 7 . F r t n e C e l t i c s e t t l e m e n t in S p a i n , see E. A . T h o m p s o n , ' B r i t o n i a ' , Christianity in Britain,}00-yoo, ed. M. W . B a r l e y an d R. P. C. H a n s o n ( L e i c e s t e r , 1 9 6 8 ) , p p . 2 0 1 - 5 .

23 T h e Anonymous Life of St Cuthbert iv.8 (Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert, ed. and t r a n s . B. C o l g r a v e(Cambr idge , 1940) , p p . 1223), wh ic h w a s w r i t t e n c. 7 0 0 , m e n t i o n s how the sa int w a s s h o w n the ci tywa l l s of Carl i s le and a wel l , wh ich we re of R o m a n c o n s t r u c t i o n . F o r ecclesiast ica l surviva ls , seeP . A. W i l s o n , ' T h e Cul t of St M a r t i n in the Bri t i sh Is les , wi th Par t icular Reference to C a n t e r b u r ya n d C a n d i d a C a s a ' , lanes Review 19 (1968) , 129-43 .

24 For the l ik e ly c o n t e m p o r a n e i t y of l a t e Roman and e a r l y A n g l o - S a x o n o c c u p a t i o n of A b i n g d o n , se eM. Bidd l e , H. T. L a m b r i c k an d J. N . L. M y r e s , ' T h e E a r l y H i s t o r y of A b i n g d o n , B e r k s h i r e , and itsA b b e y ' , MA 12 (1968) , 27 an d 4 1 . Ine ' s l aws of t h e l a t e seven th cen tu ry l eg i s l a t e fo r b o t h S a x o n sand Ce l t s .

2 5 ' A number of the wretched survivors were caught in the mountains and butchered wholesale. Others,their spirit broken by hunger, went to surrender to the enemy; they were fated to be slaves for ever.'Text and translation in Gildas. The Ruin of Britain and other Works, ed. and trans. MichaelWinterbottom, Arthurian Period Sources 7 (Chichester, 1978), at pp. 27 and 98.

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David Pelteretenslavement was the lot of many in the fifth century since the non-Germanicpeoples that pressed down upon England were also familiar with theinstitution of slavery.26 The experience of the young St Patrick may be takenas exemplifying what must have been the fate of numerous Romano-Britons.The son of a municipal official, the sixteen-year-old Patrick was seized withmany others at his father's country villa somewhere in the south-west ofEngland by raiders.27 Transported to Ireland, he spent the next six years asa slave tending his owner's flocks before managing to escape back toBritain.28 In the following century St Germanus of Paris {ob. 575 x 577) wasseeking the redemption of Scottish slaves in France, which suggests that theturbulence caused by the invasions engulfed the whole island.29 There is nofirm information on the fate of the indigenous inhabitants of England itselfin the sixth century ,30 but, since much of the coun try (except for the south-westand the far north) came totally under A nglo-Saxon control du ring that period,it is likely that many were enslaved.Nor did the practice cease once the native peoples had been conquered,for war was endemic in Anglo-Saxon England and the various immigrantgroups were not averse to preying on each other. An example of the fate ofthose subjugated through inter-tribal conflicts is given in Bede's account ofthe Mercian thegn Imma, who was found by the Northum brians lying on thebattlefield after a fight between them and the Mercians in 679. 3I Immapretended to be a poor peasant who was bringing supplies for the soldiery.He later admitted his thegnly status. His captor, who had lost relatives inthe battle, felt he deserved to be killed, but nevertheless spared him andinstead sold him to a Frisian in London, from whom he was able to redeemhimself. The story suggests that among the Anglo-Saxons the fighting menon the losing side were likely to be killed but that those who were not

26 Fo r t h e ear ly Scots as s l ave owne rs , see Adoration's Life ofColumba 7 9 b - 8 o a , ed . an d t r ans . A . O . an dM . O . A n d e r s o n ( L o n d o n , 1 9 6 1 ) , p p . 3 9 8 - 4 0 ; , and fo r the I r i s h , ibid. 8 7 b - 9 o a , p p . 4 2 2 - 8 , a s wel las t h e n u m e r o u s r e f e r e n c e s t o cap t ive s in the Annals of Ulster, ed . an d t r a n s . W . M . H e n n e s s y i v(Du b l in , 1901) , Index , s.v. capt ives.

27 T h e prec i se da t i ng o f Patr ick 's l i fe is still a v e x e d q u e s t i o n . As L. Bie l e r po in t s o u t , St Patrick andthe Coming of Christianity, A Hist , o f I r i sh Ca tho l i c i sm 1 (Dub l in , 1967) , J2 , the raid w as a m a j o r o n e .Thi s sugges t s t ha t i t may have taken place some t ime af ter th e Roman forces le f t Bri ta in . Bie lers u g g e s t s (p. 47, n. 5) tha t Pa t r ick 's fa ther w as a decurio o f G l e v u m ( G l o u c e s t e r ) a n d a r g u e s (p. 52,n. 35 ) t ha t t h e villa was on the Seve rn e s tua ry . B i e l e r , ibid, and R. P . C . H a n s o n , Saint Patrick: hisOrigins and Career ( O x f o r d , 1968) l ist t h e m o s t i m p o r t a n t r e c e n t s t u d i e s o n Pa t r i ck .

2 8 Confessions 1 and 16, Libri Epistolarum Sancti Patricii Episcopi, ed. L. Bie l er , I r i sh Man usc r ip t sC o m m i s s i o n ( D u b l i n , 1952) 1, 56-7 and 65.

29 V e n a n t i u s F o r t u n a t u s , Vita Sancti Germani LXX I I (193) , M G H , A u c t . A n t i q . 4 .2 , ed . B . Krusch (Be r l i n ,1885), 26 .3 0 V e n a n t i u s F o r t u n a t u s m e n t i o n s {ibid.) t ha t in a d d i t i o n t o S c o t t i, o t h e r ' c o n t i g u a e g e n t e s ' b e s o u g h tthe saint fo r f r e ed o m f r o m b o n d a g e . T h e s e i n c l u d e d ' B r i t t o ' a n d ' S a x o ' , w h o m a y have been t h eCel ts o f E n g l a n d an d t h e i n v a d i n g S a x o n s , b u t t h e r e fe rence migh t equa l l y be to the Cel ts o f Br i t t anyan d t o t h e con t inen t a l Saxons .

31 Historia Ecclesiastica iv .22 , Bedt's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed . B. Colg rave andR. A. B. Mynors (O xford, 1969), pp. 40 0-5 .IO ?


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Slave raiding and slave trading in early Englandwarriors would simply have been enslaved,32 a modification of the customof killing all adult male captives that was practised by some other earlyGermanic peoples.33 Other sources suggest, however, that captives were heldas hostages for ransom (though presumably enslavement was their fate if noone paid for their release). Earlier in the seventh century Filibert, abbot ofJumieges and Noirmoutier, had sent his monks to England to redeemcaptives,34 and St Richarius also undertook this task when he was inEngland.35 The sources do not record, however, the status of these captives.Conquest by more powerful neighbours probably accounts for thedisappearance from the historical record of many of the minor tribes thatappear in the Tribal Hidage26 and in scattered place-names.37 From at leastthe late sixth century this internecine strife among the Germanic settlers maybe said to have been the most productive source of slaves. Many of thesewould have been captives, but under such unsettled conditions this was byno means the only way in which a man could become a slave. The PoenitentialeTheodori, which, whatever its ultimate date of compilation, drew on sourcesdating back to the late seventh century, records a variety of grounds forenslavement.38 The fact that it devotesfiveclauses to the marital complicationsthat could ensue from a spouse's being led into captivity shows the impactwhich this practice had on society at this time. The Poenitentiale also mentionsthat a father ' necessitate coactus' could sell a son under seven years of ageinto slavery; after that he had to have the son's permission, presumably upto the age of fourteen, when he could voluntarily enter servitude.39 Certain3 2 I suspect that E. John is right in his suggestion that the fighting was usually done by a warrior elite

in the early Anglo-Saxon period rather than by all freemen of the tribe including the ceorlas. See'English Feudalism and the Structure of Anglo-Saxon Society', Orbis Britanniae, Stud, in Early Eng.Hist. 4 (Leicester, 1966), 128-53.

33 Thompson, 'Slavery in Early Germany', p. 21 and n. 14.34 Vita Filiberti Abbatis Gemeticensis et Heriensis 23, ed . W. L e v i s o n , M G H , S c r i p t . R e r . M e r o v . 5

(Hanover and Leipzig, 1910), 596. Levison discusses some of the references to the slave trade in theVitae of the Merovingian saints, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp.) and 8-9. See also A. Lohaus, Die Merowinger un d England, Miinchener Beitrage zur Mediavistik undRenaissance-Forschung 19 (Munich, 1974), 39-42.

35 Vita Richarii Sacerdotis Centulensis Primigenia 7, e d . B . K r u s c h , M G H , S c r i p t . R e r . M e r o v . 7 ( H a n o v e ra nd L e i p z i g , 1920), 4 4 8 .

3 6 For a study of the tribal groups mentioned in this document, see W. Davies and H. Vierck, 'TheContexts of Tribal Hidage: Social Aggregates and Settlement Patterns', FS 8 (1974), 223-93. MissDavies (p. 227) assigns it a date of 670 x 690, though it should be noted that o thers consider it tobe a product of the second half of the eighth century; see, e.g., C. Hart, 'The Tribal Hidage', TRHS5th ser. 21 (1971), 133 J7, and 'T he Kingdom of Mercia', Mercian Studies, ed. A. Dornier (Leicester,977), PP- 43-6i.

3 7 Some of these are discussed by E. Ekwall (' Tribal Names in English Place-Names', Namn och Bygd4i (i95 3) . 29-77)-3 8 T h e mos t c onve n ie n t ly a c c e s s ib l e t e x t is Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain

and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs m (Oxford, 1871), 176-203 and trans. J. T. McNeilland H. M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance, Columbia Univ. Records of Civilization, Sourcesand Stud. 29 (New York, 1938), 182-215, with a review of the scholarship on the text and its datingat pp. 179-82. si Poenitentiale Theodori 11.12.20-4 and 11.13.1-2.

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David Pelteretcrimes are also mentione d as cause for enslavem ent: removal of a monk fromhis monastery, theft and fornication.40 Two of the late-seventh-century lawcodes confirm this. According to the legal code promulgated by Wihtred ofKent in 695, freemen caught in the act of stealing could be sold ' ofer s x 'if the king so decided.41 And penal servitude is implied in Ine's laws, whichhad been issued in Wessex a few years earlier, where, however, the sale ofa fellow countryman across the sea ']?eah he scyldig sie' ('even though hebe guilty') was proscribed.42

Slaves were potentially troublesome possessions, whether penally enslavedor captives. If they could not be redeemed, it could be more profitable todispose of them abroad, where they could be exchanged for goods nototherwise available. Just as the continental Germ ans had exported their slavesto the Roman Empire, so the Anglo-Saxons exported their slaves across theseas. Perhaps the best-known evidence of this trade lies in Bede's accountof the meeting Gregory the Great had with some Anglian slave boys in amarket in Rome, an event that is alleged to have prompted his missionaryinterest in England.43 The story may, in fact, be no more than a pious fictioncomposed by some Northumbrian monk,44 but a letter of Gregory's, whichpossibly suggested the story to someone, proves that the pope was aware ofthe existence of such Anglo-Saxon slaves on the continent. In September 595he gave instructions to his priest, Candidus, to buy 'pueri Angli' who werefor sale in southern Gaul.45 This was probably at Marseilles, a major centrefor the trade .46 It was there, according to the Vita Eligii, that St Eligius (Eloi),who was to become bishop of Noyon in 641, freed many persons of diversenationality, including Saxons.47 It may be assumed, how eve r, that such slavescould be found in other major towns in Merovingian Gaul in the seventhcentury. For instance, the most famous of all Anglo-Saxon slaves, Balthild,wife of Clovis II (63957) and patroness of monasteries, is unlikely to havebeen purchased in the south.48 She was bought for a very small sum as a4 0 Ibid. 1.5.1 and 11.12.8.41 W i h t r e d 2 6 , L i e b e r m a n n , Gcset^e 1, 14 ( t e x t ) ; EH D n o . 3 1 ( t r a n s l a t i o n ) .4 2 I n e 1 1 , L i e b e r m a n n , Geset^e 1, 94-5 ( t e x t ) ; EH D no . 32 ( t r a n s l a t i o n ) .4 3 Historia Ecclesiastica 11.1. Th e s to ry is t o ld a l so b y t h e a n o n y m o u s b i o g r a p h e r o f G r e g o r y , w h o ,

h o w e v e r , d o e s n o t d e s c r i b e t h e m as s l aves . See Th e Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, ed . an d t r ans .B . C o l g r a v e ( L a w r e n c e , K a n . , 1968), p p . 9 0 - 1 .

4 4 C o l g r a v e m a k e s t h i s c o n j e c t u r e in Tb e Earliest Life, at p . 145 , n . 43 .4 5 Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents i l l , 5 .4 6 O n M ar s e i ll e s , s ee V er l i n d e n , L'Esclapage 1, 670.4 7 Vita Eligii Episcopi Noviomagtnsis 1 .10, ed . B . Kru sch , MG H , Scr ip t . Rer . Me rov . 4 (H an ove r and

Leipz ig , 1902) , 6 7 7 . K r u s c h (ibid. n . 3 ) , cons ide r s the Saxons r efer r ed to as be ing o f Eng l i sh r a thert h a n o f co n t i n en t a l o r i g i n .

4 8 Vita Sanctae Baltbildis, ed . B . K r u s c h , M G H , Sc r ip t . R e r . M er o v . 2 ( H an o v e r , 1888) , 482-508. O nB a l t h i l d , see 1 . L . Nels on , 'Q ue en s as Jeze bels : the Career s o f Brunh i l d and Bal th i ld in Mero v ing i anH i s t o r y ' , Medieval Women, ed . De rek Bake r , S tud , in Churc h His t . , Subs id ia 1 (Oxfo rd , 1978),3'"77-

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Slave raiding and slave trading in early Englandhousehold slave for Herchinoald, a mayor of the palace.49 After her elevationin status she in turn purchased the release of captives, particularly men andwomen of her own nation, whom she then introduced to the monastic life.50It is probable that she bought these persons in northern and central France,especially since the monasteries that she established were near Paris and inPicardy. Other English captives were to be found yet further north in thestill pagan Low Countries. St Amandus, the Angevin missionary bishop, isreported to have ransomed 'captivi vel pueri transmarini' in the course ofhis work around Ghent; these presumably were of English origin.51 Thecumulative effect of this evidence is to suggest that slaves from England wereto be found on the continent in large numbers and, as the Poenitentiale Theodoriand the codes of Wihtred and Ine show, this trade continued throughout theseventh cen tury. These slaves are likely to have entered servitude for diversereasons. The largest number were probably cap tives, though the evidence mayhave been in some measure distorted because the freeing of captives seemsto have been a literary motif in the Merovingian saints' lives, which provideso much of the information on slaves in this period.52 It should beremembered, therefore, that debt and penal slaves also ran the risk of beingexported abroad.

Though captor may often have turned trader, the sources hint that at thisearly period there were two groups of people who primarily filled this latterrole. First, there were the Frisians. The Frisian trader who bought Imma isunlikely to have been exceptional. The Frisians are known to have beenmiddle-men in trade and there is no reason to believe that they would haveavoided trafficking in men.53 There was a Frisian colony in York in the m iddleof the eighth century54 and other trading links existed between England andFrisia.55 Another group of traders were the Jews. In some of his lettersGregory the Great mentions Jewish slavers operating in northern Gaul.564 Vita Sanclae Ba/thildis, p. 483.50 Ibid. p. 494. St Ansgar, bishop of Bremen and Hamburg, is reported later to have done the same

in northern Europe; see Vita Sane/:Ansharii 15 (cf. 56 and 38), ed. C. F. Dahlmann, MGH , Scrip tores2 (Hanover, 1829), 700, 720 and 721 (text) ; Anskar, the Apostle of the North, S01-S6;, trans.C. H. Robinson, Lives of Early and Mediaeval Missionaries [1] (London, 1921), 56, 116 and 118-19.

s l Vita Amandi Episcopi 1.9, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, Script. Rer. Merov. 5, 43)." Cf. Levison, England and the Continent, p. 9. See also Vita Sancti Germani LXXII (192-6), which is not

mentioned by Levison.1 3 Wandalbert in his Miracula Sancti Goaris 28 mentions a Frisian trader whose boat was pulled upstream

along the Rhine by slaves with ropes from the bank, which shows that the Frisians themselves atleast possessed slaves: MGH , Scriptores 15.1, ed. O. H older-Egger (Hanover, 1888), 370.

54D. Jellema, 'Frisian Trade in the Dark Ages', Speculum 30 C

1955)> M~}6> at 31.55 Ibid.pp. ij~ 36 ;G. C. Homans, 'T he Frisians in East Anglia', EconHR, 2nd ser. 10(1957-8), 189-206;

P. V. Hill, 'Anglo-Frisian Trade in the Light of Eighth-Cen tury Co ins ', Trans, of the London andMiddlesex Archaeol. Soc. 14 ( 1 9 5 8 ) , 1 3 8 - 5 6 .

5 6 The matter comes up in two identical letters of July 599, one sent to Queen Brunichild and the o therto Theodoric and Theodebert, kings of the Franks; text in MGH, Epistolae 2, ed. L. M. Hartmann(Berlin, 1899), at 199-200 (ix.203) and 203 (ix.21)).

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David PelteretThey were well known as slave traders in the western Mediterranean and itwould have been natural for them to have extended their operations toBritain, particularly as there was a ready market for slaves in Gaul.57The hegemony of the Mercians under Offa in the late eighth century mighthave been expected to have inhibited inter-tribal raiding, thereby reducing thenumber of persons from this source traded abroad. But the closing decadesof the century witnessed a new source of social upheaval: the appearance ofViking raiders on English shores.58 The Vikings are well attested as slaversin Europe. Their raids took them all over the continent, including its easternand southern extremities. Slaves of Slavonic origin, for instance, wereregularly used by them as a major trading item with Islamic merchants ineastern Europe.59 As for the south, one record tells of them even going asfar as Makhor in Mauretania, where they took captives,60 and they capturedmen in raids on Spain in 844 and in 859 x 861. Although some of the latterwere ransomed, not all were so fortunate: a number of Moors taken duringthe second attack on Spain ended up in Ireland.61 According to the sagas,Ireland itself was a source of slaves for the Vikings, as was Scotland.62 Andonce the Vikings settled in Ireland they used it as a base to make further raidson Britain.63 Thus in 871 Olafr the White and Ivarr the Boneless returnedto Dublin 'et preda maxima hominum Anglorum et Britonum et Pictorumdeducta est secum ad Hiberniam in captivitate'.64 The nature of the sourcesis such that there is not much hard information on the situation in England,but it can be assumed that many of the conquered were enslaved. There is,for instance, a report that Guthfrith, king of Northumbria, was originally

5 7 Cf. a b o v e , nn . 46 and 4 7 . On the J e w s as t r a d e r s , see Ve r l inde n . L'Esdavage 1, 6 7 2 - 7 .5 8 ASC 787 A E F ( = 789): Tw o Chronicles 1, 54-5; The Chronicle of JEtbelveard, ed. A. Campbell (L ondon,

1962), pp. 26-7.5 ' S. Bolin, 'Mohammed, Charlemagne and Ruric', Scandinavian Economic Hist. Rev. 1 (1953), 30, and

references there cited; P. H. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings, 2nd ed. (London, 1971), pp. 193-4.6 0 The Arabic source for this reports that the attack took place in 761, which would seem to be a centurytoo early, though the data has been defended by A. Melvinger (Lts Premieres Incursions de s Vikingsen Occident d'apres les sources arabes (Uppsala, 1955), pp. 12964).

6 1 For the texts and a discussion of the attacks on Spain, see R. Dozy, Recherches sur t"bistoire et la litteraturede I'Espagnependant le moyenage, 3rd ed. (Paris and Leiden, 1881) 11, 250-86, and Jon Stefansson, 'T heVikings in Spain. From Arabic (Moorish) and Spanish Sources ' ,SBVS 6 (1909-10), 31-46. For Moorsin Ireland, see Annals of Ireland: Three Fragments copied rom Ancient Sources by Dubbaltach Mac Firbisigb,ed. and trans. J. O'Donovan (Dublin, i860), pp. 15863.

6 2 For some convenient translations from saga sources of references to the capture of slaves in Irelandand Scotland, see Early Sources of Scottish History A.D. joo to 12S6, trans. A. O. Anderson 1( E d i n b u r g h , 1 9 2 2 ) , 3 3 5 , 3 4 5 , 3 6 1 , n . 3 , a nd 3 8 4 .

63 B. G. Charles, Old Norse Relations with Wales (Cardiff, 1934), pp. 34-7; E. I. Bromberg, 'Wales andthe Mediaeval Slave Trade', Speculum 17 (1942), 265. On the Vikings of Ireland as slavers, seeA . P . S m y t h , Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles S;o-SSo (Oxfo rd , 1977) , p p . 1 5 4 - 6 8 .

6 4 'and a great multitude of men, English, Britons and Picts, were brought by them to Ireland, incaptivity', Annals of Ulster 1, 384-5, s.a. 870; Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, p. 154.

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Slave raiding and slave trading in early Englandthe slave of a widow to whom he had been sold by the Danes,65 though thelegends that gathered round this man make it next to impossible to separatefact from fiction.66 The Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, drawn up c. 886,records that both West Saxons and Danes agreed not to harbour the other'srunaway slaves, which shows the social instability that existed.67

The attacks of the Vikings shattered the power of the non-West Saxonpeoples of England. As for Wessex, it had already started its gradual rise toascendancy under Egbert (802 -39). Am ong his conquests was the subjugationof Cornwall.68 There is linguistic evidence that suggests that this conquest,and possibly also the further integration of the area into the West Saxonkingdom that took place nearly a century later under Athelstan, led to theenslavement of many of the indigenous Celts. From the tenth century WestSaxon texts unambiguously use the world wealb in the sense ' a slave', whereasformerly it had denoted 'a Celt'.69 This shift in meaning from a termdenoting national origin to one indicating legal status shows the samesemantic shift that is represented in the Modern English words ' Slav' and's lave'.7 0 Large-scale enslavement resulting from the conquest of the lastremaining major pocket of Celts in southern England seems to be the onlyreasonable explanation for this change.Alfred the Great's successors in the tenth century further enhanced thepower of Wessex. During this period men were seized by Scandinavian andSaxon alike. The A.nglo-Saxon Chronicle records that captives were taken byVikings in 917 and 940.7I On the other hand, Edward the Elder led a combinedWest Saxon and M ercian force against the Danes in the north in 909 and 'heogehergade swiSe micel on ]?aem norS here, aegSer ge on mannum ge on

6 5 S i m e o n of D u r h a m , Historia Dumlmensis Ecclesiae, Sjmeonis Monacbi Opera Omnia, e d . T . A r n o l d , R S75.1 ( London, 1882) , 6 8 ; Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, ibid. p . 2 0 3 .

6 6 T h e s e a re r e v i e w e d by J. C. H. R. S t e e n s t r u p (Normanmrne 11 ( C o p e n h a g e n , 1 8 7 8) , 9 3 - 1 0 3 ) .6 7 L i e b e r m a n n ,G e s e t ^ e 1, 1 2 8 , ch. 5 ( t e x t ) ; EHD n o . 34 ( t r a n s l a t i o n ) .6 8 O n r e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n C o r n w a l l a n d W e s s e x , s e e W . G . H o s k i n s , Tie Westward Expansion of Wessex,

U n i v . o f Leices te r , D ept o f E n g . Loca l H is t . , O ccas iona l Paper s 13 ( Le ices te r , i960) , a n dH . P. R. F i n b e r g , ' S h e r b o r n e , G l a s t o n b u r y , a n d t h e E x p a n s i o n o f W e s s e x ' , Lucerna ( L o n d o n , 1 9 6 4 ) ,p p . 9 5 - 1 1 5 .

M M. L. Faul l , ' T h e S e m a n t i c D e v e l o p m e n t o f O l d E n g l i s h Wealb', Leeds Stud, in Eng. 8 (1976 for 1975) ,2 0 - 4 4 , p r o v i d e s a v a l u a b l e s t u d y of the e v i d e n c e , t h o u g h I am not in a g r e e m e n t w i t h all he rc o n c l u s i o n s . It is q u e s t i o n a b l e , for e x a m p l e , w h e t h e r t h e wealb o f I n e 2 3 .3 s h o u l d be r e g a r d e d as as l a v e : t h o u g h b e a t i n g w a s a p u n i s h m e n t u s u a l l y i m p o s e d o n l y o n s l a v e s , it is c o n c e i v a b l e t h a t it m i g h ti n W e s s e x h a v e b e e n e x t e n d e d to the s u b j u g a t e d C e l t i c p o p u l a t i o n . I t s h o u l d b e n o t e d t h a t wealb int h e s e n s e ' s l a v e ' a p p e a r s o n l y o n c e in a n o n - W e s t S a x o n t e x t , t h e C a m b r i d g e g u i l d r e g u l a t i o n s{Diplomatarium Anglicum fcvi Saxonici, ed. and t r a n s. B . T h o r p e ( L o n d o n , 1 8 6 )) , p p . 6 1 1 - 1 2 ;translation also, EHD no. 136). This does not date from before the second half of the tenth century( N . R . K e r , Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon ( O x f o r d , 1957), p . 3 6 ) .

70 C . V e r l i n d e n , ' L ' O r i g i n e d e sclavus = e s c l a v e ' , Arch'wum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 17 (1942) , 9 7 - 1 2 8 .71 ASC 920 A ( = 917) and 943 D (= 940): Two Chronicles 1, 101-2 and 111. On the dating, see ibid.

11, 116 and EHD no. 1, n. to years 940-3, respectively.

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David Pelteretgehwelces cynnes yrfe'.72 Though the Viking threat abated for a while inthe middle of the century, the internal slave trade evidently did not cease.Possibly because the normal sources of slaves had temporarily dried up, thetwo references to the sale of slaves during the reign of Edgar both concernpersons already of servile status who had been stolen and then sold. In theone instance, recorded in Lantfred of Winchester's Translatio et miraculaS. Swithuni, a slave-woman stolen in the north was subsequently sold inWinchester.73 In the second instance the stealing of a slave in Ieceslea (perhapsYaxley, Huntingdonshire) led to a court case in which the thief eventuallylost his lands.74With the renewed Viking incursions in the reign of ^Ethelred slave raidingand the sale of men abroad once more became a prominent feature of thetimes so much so, in fact, that it even provided a handy literary theme fora continental poet, Warner of Rouen.75 In a verse satire written perhaps1015 x 1024 Warner tells of the peregrinations and misadventures of oneMoriuht, a Celtic poet probably of Irish origin, who together with his wifewas captured by some Danes.76 He was then sold at a market called by thepoet Corbric, which presumably was Corbridge, once the site of a Northum-brian royal residence and in the tenth century a contact-point between theNorthern Scots, the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians of the kingdom ofYork.77 At Corbridge he was purchased by a monastery of women.78 Herehe had an outlet for his carnal proclivities but when his behaviour becameknown he was forced to flee. Once more he was captured by Danes, whosold him to a widow in an unnamed continental Saxon market.79 Afterseducing her he left Germania and eventually found his wife enslaved to apoor man in a town near Rouen. He redeemed her and took her to Rouen,where he claimed to be a grammarian and wrote poor verse in honour ofthe archbishop, Hugo.80W arner's Latin style reveals affinities with contemporary Anglo-Saxon Latin7 2 'it ravaged very severely the territory of the northern army, both men and all kinds of cattle', ASC

909 AB, 91 o CD: Two Chroniclts I, 94-6 (text); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, p. 61 (translation).7 3 Miracula Sancti Swithuni 11.23-8, Ada Sanctorum, J u l i i I, 297.7 4 Anglo-Saxon Charters, e d . A. J . R o b e r t s o n , 2nd ed. ( C a m b r i d g e , 1 9 5 6 ) , no . 44 , pp . 9 0 - 3 . O n Ieceslea,

se e ibid. p . 336 .7 5 O n W a r n e r ^ s e e L. M u s s e t , ' Le S a t i r i s t e G a m i e r de R o u e n et son mi l i eu (debu t de X I e s i ec l e ) ' , Revue

du Moytn Age Latin 10 (1954) , 237-58 .7 6 H . O m o n t , ' S a t i r e de G a m i e r de R o u e n c o n t r e le p o e t e M o r i u h t . ( X e - X I e s i ec l e ) ' , Annuaire-Bulletin

de la Socie'te de /'Histoirc de France 31 (1894), 193210.7 7 Musset, ' Le Satiriste Gamier', pp. 250-1.7 8 For references to a monasterium at Corbridge in primary sources, see ibid. p. 251 , n. 41 .7 0 Musset {ibid. p. 251) mentions Hamburg, Bremen or Hedeby as possible places.8 0 Musset {ibid. p. 252, n. 43 , and p. 253) feels that it is probable that the poetry was written after Hugo's

death in 989 and that Moriuht did not arrive in Normandy before the end of the century.

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81and it is not unlikely that he was reasonably well informed onEnglish affairs, particularly as he lived in an impo rtant trading tow n situatedclose to the English coastline.82 Though one can dismiss as vulgar nights offancy the imbroglios arising out of Moriuht's personality, there is nothingimprobable about some elements in Warner's account. Both the historicalimportance of Corbridge and its strategic geographical setting would havemade it a suitable market town in the late tenth century. And, as has alreadybeen seen from Bede and the Miracula of St Swithun, captives could betraded far from their place of origin. What is perhaps more important is

Warner's emphasis on the Danes as the source of Moriuht's misfortunes. Itis also informative that he does not regard it as unusual for Moriuht's wifeto have been a slave in Normandy. As Musset points out, domestic slaveryin Normandy had been suspected from a number of allusions in literarysources; mention of it by Warner proves that it was known in this area asin some other parts of France.83 This is hardly surprising since in the tenthcentury Rouen was a major trading-point for goods including slaves seized by the Vikings.84 Musset, in fact, considers it to have been one of theprincipal markets for slaves in the west.85 It was certainly a very convenientlocation for pirates to offload captives taken in raids along the Englishcoastline.From an Anglo-Saxon perspective the disruptions of the period ro und theturn of the millennium receive their most vivid expression in W ulfstan's Sermoad Anglos, composed c. 1014:86And oft \>rx\ pasne )>egen )>e aer wjes his hlaford cnyt swype fseste 7 wyrcS him to)raele J>urh Godes yrre.. .O ft twegen saemen o88e fry hwilum drifaS ]?a drafecristenra manna fram sae to sae ut purh pas peode gewelede togasdere, us eallum toworoldscame, gif we on eornost asnige cupon ariht understandan. Ac ealne J?aenebysmor \>e. we oft ]?olia6 we gyldaS mid weorSscipe }?am ]?e us scendaS. We him81 M . La pidg e , 'Three La t in Po em s f ro m /H the lwo ld ' s Scho o l at W i n c h e s t e r ' , AS E i ( 1 9 7 2 ) , 1 0 1 - 2 .

82 O n t h e possible l i terary l inks between t h e t w o areas, s e e L . M u s s e t , ' R o u e n e t P A n g l e t e r r e v e r s l 'anm i l ' , Annales de Normandie 2 4 ( 1 9 7 4 ) , 2 8 7 - 9 0 .

83 M u s s e t , ' L e Sa t i r i s t e G a m ier ' , p. 253 and n . 47 .8 4 O n th e i m p o r t a n c e o f Ro uen dur ing th i s per io d , s e e L . W . B r e e s e , ' T h e Pers i s t ence o f Sca nd ina v ia n

C o n n e c t i o n s in N o r m a n d y i n t h e T e n t h a n d Ea rly Elev enth Centur i es ' , Viator 8 ( 1 9 7 7 ) , 5 j6.8 5 L . M u s s e t , ' L a Seine no rm a nde et le c o m m e r c e m a r i t i m e d u I I I e a u X I e s i e c l e ' , Revue des Socie'te's

Savantes de Haute-Normandie, Lettres et Sciences Humaines 53 (1 9 6 9 ) , 9 , where o ther re ferences t o thistrade at R o u e n in the tenth century ar e given. Musset implies that th e slave trade died out in thisarea in the first half of the eleventh century. B ut Will iam o f Poitiers mentions that after Earl Haroldhad been captured in France c. 1064 he could have been sold, which suggests that th e trade persistedwell into th e middle of the century; see Histoire de Guillaume le Conquirant, 41 , ed . R. Forevi l le (Paris,1952), 102, and cf. H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, Th e Governance 0} Mediaeval England fromthe Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh, 1963) , p. 121 , n. 5.

8 6 O n t h e date of the f irst composit ion of the h o m i l y , se e Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, e d . D . W h i t e l o c k , 3r dcd. (London, 1963) , p. 6.

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David PelteretgyldaS singallice, 7 hy us hynaS dseghwamlice. Hy hergiaS 7 hy bxrna6, rypa)? 7reafiaS 7 to scipe laedaS; 7 la, hwaet is asnig ooer on eallum J'am gelimpum butanGodes yrre ofer )?as )?eode, swutol 7 gesaene?87The rhetoric is that of the Old Testament and Gildas,88 but it expresses agenuine concern for all that. Above all, Wulfstan opposed the sale of menoutside the country, as can be seen by its frequent proscription in the lawcodes promulgated under his influence during the reigns of ifLthelred andCnut.89In the reign of Cnut many of these slaves were, as might be expected,destined for Denmark, as William of Malmesbury reports (indeed he assertsthat Cnut's sister was behind the trade).90 Ho w long into the eleventh centurythis particular slave market was catered for is unknown, but Scandinavianattacks continued into the Norman period.91 The biography of Gruffudd apCynan tells how Hugh, earl of Chester, outwitted a band of Danes seekingslaves:Eno hagen, ydd oeddynt y bratw yr anudonol o'r Daenysseit a vredychessynt Ruffuddyn aros yr eddiweideon a addawsei Hu uddunt, a cheith o wyr a gwragedd, o weisseona morynnyon. Ag ynteu a'e talws uddunt hwy megisffyddlawny anffyddlawn, yny kadarnhaei dwywawl lunyeth; kanys neu ry ddaroedd iddaw ar ehang kynullawholl wrachiot mantach, krwm, kloff, unllygeityawg, gormessawl, diallu, ag eu kynniguddunt ym pwyth eu bradwryaeth. A phan welsant wynteu hynny, gillwng eullynghes a wnaethant a chyrchu y dyfynfor parth ag Ywerddon.92

8 7 ' An d often a slave bind s very fast th e theg n wh o prev ious ly was his master and make s him into aslave thro ugh Go d's an ge r. . .Often two seamen, or maybe three, drive the droves of Christian menfrom sea to sea, out through this people, huddled together, as a public shame to us all, if we couldseriously and rightly feel any shame. But all the insult which we often suffer we repay with honouringthose who insult us; we pay them continually and they humiliate us daily; they ravage and they burn,plunder and rob and carry on board; and lo, what else is there in all these events except God's angerclear and visible over this people?' The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. D. Bethurum (Oxford, 1957). PP-271-2, lines 117-28 (text); EHD no. 240 (translation).

88 The driving from sea to sea looks as if it has been borrowed from Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae 24:'Confovebatur namque ultionis iustae praecedentium scelerum causa de mari usque ad mare ignisorientali sacrilegorum manu exaggeratus' ('In just punishment for the crimes that had gone before,a fire heaped up and nurtured by the hand of the impious easterners spread from sea to sea'). Textand translation in Gildas. The Ruin of Britain, pp. 27 and 97. The theme of the enslavement of theinhabitants caused by God's wrath toward them is probably derived from the same source; cf. above,n . 2 5 .

8 0 V /Ethelred z, VI yEthelred 9, VII jEthelred ; and II Cnut 3. The first two clauses perhaps implythat it was still permissible to sell persons guilty of crime out of the country, but no exceptions aremade in the later codes. On Wulfs tan 's role in these codes, see D. Whitelock, 'Wulfstan and the Lawsof Cnut', EHR 63 (1948), 444-52, and 'Wulfstan's Authorship of Cnut's Laws', EHR 70 (195 5),7285; K. Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 278-87; andA Wulfstan Manuscript, containing Institutes, Laws and Homilies: British Museum Cotton Nero A. 1, ed.H. R. Loyn, EEM F 17 (Copenhagen, 1971), 48-9.

0 0 De Gestis Regum Anglorum 11.200, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 90.1 (London, 1887), 245." ASC 1069 DE and 1076 D (= 1075), 1075 E. There was also a late pre-Conquest raid on Sandwich

and Essex in 1048 in which men were seized {ASC 1046 E ( = 1048)).9 2 Historia Gruffudvab Kenan, ed. D. Simon Evans (Cardiff, 1977), p. 27. 'Then, moreover, the perjured

traitors of Danes who betrayed G ruffyd were expecting the promises which Hugo had promised them,I I O


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Slave raiding and slave trading in early EnglandThe passage provides an interesting insight in to the human values of the time.The political disruptions in late Anglo-Saxon England also led some intocaptivity, from which enslavement was a possible consequence. After theunfortunate iEtheling Alfred had been taken captive in 1036 some of hiscompanions were sold by Earl Godwine.93 When Earl Harold landed in theWest Country from Ireland in 1052, the Chronicle states, 'nam him on orfe7 on m annum 7 on aehtum swa him ge we arS ',94 and, though he and his fatherwere subsequently reconciled with the king, it cannot be assumed that thecaptured men regained their freedom. And in 1065, when a force ofNorthumbrians travelled south to Northampton in order to seek recognitionfrom King Edward of Morcar as their earl, it is reported 'fela hund mannahi namon 7 laeddon norS mid heom swa ]?et seo scyre 7 )?a oSra scyre ]?epasr neh sindon wurdon fela wintra pe wyrsan'.95From the middle of the eleventh century the 'Celtic fringe' began makingpredatory raids on England. In 1055 King Griffith ap Llewelyn of Walesjoined the outlawed Earl JEKgat in a raid on Hereford and carried off someof the inhabitants.96 Incursions from Wales must have continued, for in 1081an army under William's leadership liberated 'fela hund manna' there.97 Andin the north-east Malcolm took many captives back to Scotland after a raidin 1079.98The institution of slavery did not end in England with the coming of theNormans but their growing power over the country did provide the meansnecessary to bring the trading in slaves to an eventual halt. 99 Leadingchurchmen appear to have been instrumental in exerting the pressurenecessary to cause the demise of the trade. It is useful, therefore, at this pointbriefly to survey the attitudes held by the church towards slavery du ring thisperiod. Th oughout the Anglo-Saxon era churchmen w ere ambivalent in theirviews on slavery. This is highlighted by a letter written sometime before 712

and captives of men, women, youths and maidens; and he paid them like a faithful man to theunfaithful, confirming the divine ordinance, for he had succeeded in collecting all the toothless,deformed, lame, one-eyed, troublesome, feeble hags and offered them in return for their treachery.When they saw this they loosened their fleet, and made for the deep towards Ireland' (The Historyof Gruffyd ap Cynan, ed. and trans. Arthur Jones, Publ. of the Univ. of Manchester, Hist. Ser. 9(Manchester, 1910), 149). AS C 1036 C.54 'he seized for himself what came his way in cattle, men, and pro pe rty', AS C 1052 E: Tw o Chronicles1, 178 (text) ; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, p. 124 (translation).95 ' [they] captured many hundreds of people and took them no rth with them, so that that shire and othe rneighbouring shires were the worse for it for many years', AS C 1064 E (= IO6J): Tw o Chronicles1, 192 (text); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Whitelock, p. 138 (translation).6 AS C io ji C. ' AS C 1081 E. ASC 1079 E." The disappearance of slavery from England was a complex process. For a discussion, see Loyn,Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest, pp. 350-1, and Pelteret, 'Late Anglo-Saxon Slavery',pp . 384-90.100 Die Briefe des Heiligen Bonifatius und Lul/us no. 7, ed. M. Tangl, MG H, Epist. Sel. 1 (Berlin, 1916),2 (text); EHD no. 166 (translation).1 1 1


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David Pelteretby Berhtwald, archbishop of Canterbury, to Forthhere, bishop of Sherborne,in which the latter was asked to seek the release of a Kentish girl, Eppa.100She was a captive of apparently aristocratic rank101 belonging to the abbotof Glastonbury, who was loath to release her. Over three and a half centurieslater the abbot's successor continued to own slaves, possessing in Somersetalone some 108 in 1086 according to Domesday Book.10 2 On the other hand ,there was a long tradition of opposition to the sale of slaves abroad because,no d ou bt, there was the strong risk that such persons would be sold to pagansand thus lost to Christ's flock.10 3 As has been seen, the practice had alreadybeen proscribed by Ine's legislation and the church similarly showed itsopposition by imposing penances on those guilty of the crime.10 4 It was inall probability these precedents that prompted Wulfstan to employ legislationand penitential discipline as a means of opposing the practice in the earlyeleventh century.105Though the church had from the time of the Roman Empire encouragedthe freeing of men by the laity as an act of piety, there is no evidence thatecclesiastics opposed the institution of slavery as such at any point duringthe Middle Ages.106 Th e opposition to slavery by churchmen after the comingof the Normans was clearly based on the traditional opposition to the sendingof slaves abroad. A vigorous crusader against this trade was the Anglo-Saxonbishop of Worcester, Wulfstan, who focused his attention on the Bristolmarket, w hich proved particularly hard to close. The Vita Wulfstani mentionsthat it had been a long-standing custom for persons brought from all overEngland to be transported to Bristol for eventual sale to Ireland: 'Videreset gemeres concathenatos funibus miserorum ordines, et utriusque sexus10 1 As D. Whitelock points out (EHD no. 166), her ransom money was equivalent to the wergeld of

a person of the highest status in Kent.1 0 2 E x o n D o m e s d a y I 7 3 t ; t h e figure in the E x c h e q u e r v e r s i o n is s l i g h t l y l o w e r .1 0 3 See the letters cited above, n. ;6.1 0 4 E.g. Pope Gregory III, in a letter written in 732, condemned the practice and prescribed a penance

equivalent to that for homicide: Die Brie/e des Heiligtn Bonifatius und Lul/us no. 28, lines 18-23.105 v i l ^Ethelred 5 in particular implies that penitential discipline should be imposed. The sale of men

abroad is condemned also in a handbook for the use of a confessor which its editor considers Wulfstanmight have had compiled. SeeR. Fowler, 'A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor',Anglia 83 (i 96 j) ,i 2a nd 26 . On the general relationship between penitential discipline and Anglo-Saxonl aw , see T. P . O ak l ey , English Penitential D iscipline and Anglo-Saxo n Lav in their joint Influence, St u d ,in H i s t . , E c o n o m i c s and Pu b l i c L aw ed i t ed by the Facu l t y of Pol i t i ca l Science of C o l u m b i a U n i v .107.2 ( N e w Y o r k , 1933) .

10 6 Cf. G . E . M. de Ste C r o i x ' s o b s e r v a t i o n , ' I k n o w of no g e n e r a l , o u t r i g h t c o n d e m n a t i o n of s l av e r yi n s p i r e d by a C h r i st i an o u t l o o k , b e f o r e t h e p e t i t i o n of t h e m e n n o n i t e s of G e r m a n t o w n in P e n n s y l v a n i ain 1 6 8 8 ' , ' E a r l y C h r i s t i a n A t t i tu d e s to P r o p e r t y and S l a v e r y ' , Church Society and Politics, ed. D e r e kB a k e r , S t u d , in C h u r c h H i s t . 12 ( O x f o r d , 1975) , 2 4 . E v en A. W. R u p p r e c h t , an ev an g e l i ca l C h r i s t i ana p o l o g i s t , d o e s no t cla im that t he ea r ly Fa t h e r s ev e r s o u g h t the ab o l i t i o n of s lavery (' A t t i t u d e s onS l a v e r y a m o n g t he C h u r c h F a t h e r s ' , New Dimensions in New Testament Study, e d . R. N . L o n g e n e c k e ra n d M . C. T e n n e y ( G r a n d R a p i d s , M i c h . , 1974) , p p . 2 6 1 - 7 7 ) . F r t r i e v i e w s of t h e ea r l y an d m ed i ev a lc h u r c h , see a l so R. W . L o g a n , ' T h e A t t it u de of t h e C h u r ch t o w a r d S l av e r y p r i o r to 1 5 0 0 ' , Jnl of NegroHist. 17 (1932) , 46680, and D a v i s , The Problem of Slavery, p p . 8 3 - 1 0 6 .

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Slave raiding and slave trading in early Englandadolescentes; qui liberali forma, etate integra, barbaris miserationi essent,cotidie prostitui, cotidie v end itari'.107 These were, presumably, not just thosecaptured in raids, but slaves of all origins. Young people would be the mostsuitable because they would command the best prices. With assiduouspreaching St Wulfstan managed to stop the practice. Either he or Lanfrancbrought pressure to bear on the somewhat reluctant Conqueror to outlawthe whole Anglo-Irish slave trade.108 Presumably William was loath to losethe profitable tolls that he gained from the sale of these unfortunates:fourpence was paid him as toll on every slave sold.109 The proscriptionagainst the trade recorded in the Willelmi articuli presum ably reflects William'slegislative action."0The slave trade itself was finally completely outlawed in England at theWestminster Council of 1102, which in its twenty-eighth canon ru le d: ' Nequisillud nefarium nego tium quo hactenus homines in Anglia solebant velut brutaanimalia venundari deinceps ullatenus facere praesumat.'1" It should benoted that this does not prohibit slavery per se , but it nevertheless marks asignificant shift in moral attitudes in that it proscribes all trading in menwithout qualification.

The political disorders during Stephen's reign, however, permitted re-newed slave raids from outside the country to take place. Richard of Hexhamrecords that after a battle between the English and the Scots at Clitheroe in113 8 captives were taken back to Scotland to serve there as slaves or to betraded for cattle.11 2 The A.nnals of Loch Ce record that in the same year anIrish raiding party went into ' the north of Saxan' (presumably Westmorland)and took countless persons captive.11 3 Ireland, in fact, continued to supply10 7 'You might well groan to see the long rows of young men and maidens whose beauty and youth

might move the pity of the savage, bound together with cords, and brought to market to be sold.'The Vita Wulfstani of William ofM almesbury 11.20, ed. R. R. Darlington, Camden Soc. 3rd ser. 40(London , 1928) , 43 - 4 ( tex t ) ; Life of St Wulstan , Bishop fijWorcester, trans. J. H. F. Peile (O xfor d, 1934),pp. 64-5 (translation).

1 0 8 De Cestis Kegum Anglorum i n . 2 6 9 , p . 3 2 9 .I0* This was the amoun t paid at Lewes according to Domes day Book 26r. The same amount w as paid

o n a wom an bou ght and subsequently released at Bod min : text, M. Forster , ' Die Frei lassungsurkundendes Bodmin-Evangel iars ' , A Grammatical Miscellany offered to Otto Jespersen, ed . N. Bogho lm ,A. Brussendorff and C. A. Bodelsen (Copenh agen, 1930), p. 91 , no. xx x.

11 0 Willelmi I articuli X. 9, Liebermann, Geset^e 1, 488 (text); English Historical D ocuments II: 1042-118$,ed. D. C. Dou glas and G. W. Greenaway ( Lon don , 1953). n o ' '8, p. 400 (translation).

11 1 * That no one is henceforth to presume to carry on that shameful trading whereby heretofore menused in England to be sold like brute beasts.' Eadmer, Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule, RS81 (London, 1884), 143 (text); Eadmer's History of Recent Events in England, trans. G. Bosanquet(London, 1964), p. 152 (translation). The paragraph division is that given Concilia Magnae B ritanniaeet Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins (London, 1737) 1 , 383.11 2 De Gestis R egis Stepbani, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett , RS82.3 (London, 1884), 156.

11 3 The Annals of Loch Ce, s.a. 1138, ed. and trans. W. M. Henn essy, RS 54 1 (Lo ndo n, 1871), 139.Hennessy's interpretation (p. 138, n. 3) of the Irish phrase as referring to 'the north of England, orNorth umb erland' seems a l i tt le imprecise.

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David Peltereta ready market for men well into the twelfth century and illicit trade, piraticalincursions and even kidnapping sought to satisfy this demand. Hermann theMonk mentions that w hen he and his party visited Bristol in the early twelfthcentury he was warned that it was a practice of Irish traders suddenly to upanchor and dep art w ith any incautious men that had boa rded ; these were thensold abroad.114It was as late as 1170, when D erm ot M cM urrough was seeking to establishhimself as high-king of Ireland with Norman help," 5 that the Synod ofArmagh decreed that any Englishman enslaved in Ireland was to receive hisfreedom. According to Giraldus Cambrensis, the synod regarded Ireland'ssubservience to England as a punishment for the enslavement of men by herown merchants and freebooters, although it was noted that the Englishthemselves had been as much at fault because they used to sell their childrenand relatives into slavery when they were suffering from penury andhunger.116 In the following year Henry II led an expedition into Ireland thatresulted in the submission of much of the country to E ngland.117 Thereafterreports of the menace of enslavement from this quarter finally cease. Thusthe risk of enslavement through captivity and of sale into foreign hands,which had for so many centuries been a constant hazard of English life, wasfinally removed only when the Norm ans had brou ght the neighbouring Scots,Welsh and Irish under their hegemony and had gained control of the seasround the coast." 4 Hermannus Monachus, De Miraculis Sanctae Mariae Laudunensis xxi, Migne, Patrilogia Latina 156(Paris, 1880), cols. 9856. Cf. also the opening words of the Liber Landavensis, compiled in the firstthird of the twelfth cen tury: ' Fuit vir, Aggligena natione , Elgarus, natus regione D evunsira, et captusin infantia a piratarum classe, ut solito more, ductus in captivitatem in Hiberniam, et ibi ducensservilem vitam per tempora... ' ('There was a man named Elgar, a native of England, and born inDevonshire, who, in his infancy, was taken prisoner by a set of pirates, and as was usual, conveyedto Ireland, where for some time he led a servile life'). The Text of the hook of L/an Dav reproducedfrom the Cwysaney Manuscript, ed. I. G. E vans , Ser. of Old Welsh Texts 4 (Oxford, 1893), 1 (tex t);The Liber Landavensis, ed. and trans. W. J. Rees (Llandovery, 1840), p. 3 (translation). Unfortunatelyit is not clear whether 'ut solito more' refers to the time of the writer or to the unspecified timein the past when Elgar lived. On slavery in Ireland in the twelfth century, see Smyth, ScandinavianKings, p. 156.115 See G. H. Orpen, Ireland under the Normans 1 (Oxford, 1911), 141 ff.116 Expugnatio Hibernica 1.18, Opera, ed. J. F. Dimock, RS 21.5 (London, 1867), 258.117 On Henry II and Ireland, see W. L. Warren, Henry II (London, 1973), pp. 194-206.

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